Scripting News

Why decentralizing Twitter is hopeless

Sun, 11 May 2008 13:47:25 GMT

To every yin there's a yang. Here's a brilliant counterpoint to what I've been writing here about decentralizing Twitter. I've excerpted the last paragraph because it is some of the best tech writing I've ever read. Wonderful.

Echovar: "The idea of building competitors to Twitter on the same platform, or redistributing Twitter to multiple players reminds me of the idea that New York City should be rebuilt in Ohio because it would be cheaper. Or perhaps we could distribute a little of New York City in every state of the Union. New York City is what it is because of the people who live and visit there. Building another New York City in Las Vegas doesn't result in the phenomenon that is New York City. In a very important sense, Twitter is decentralized at its core, it is rhizomatic rather than arborescent."

Now go read the whole thing, please.

PS: As has been pointed out by several emailers, the idea of relocating cities in the virtual world appeared in a piece I wrote yesterday, where I said indeed it does happen. It can't happen in the real world. But in defense of echovar, it would only happen if there were a war where platform vendors were fighting in vain to lock us in, and only when Twitter was so mature that we understood every nuance of how it's used. Yes, we are, today, locked into Twitter. And I'm not comfortable about that. Eventually, relocating New York may be what we have to do. Charles Cooper is very correct though in his piece on this subject, it's time for Twitter to get into this discussion and tell us what their thoughts are.

What do the images mean?

Sun, 11 May 2008 13:51:39 GMT

From time to time people ask what the images in the margins of Scripting News mean. I don't think I've ever answered the question on the blog itself.

There are many answers to the question because they mean whatever you want them to mean. The point is to stimulate creativity. If I wrote an article about Fidel Castro, for example, and put a fiery picture of Fidel next to the piece it would satisfy curiosity. "I wonder what he looks like?" Suspense eliminated. That kind of imagery serves to quell creativity, to push it down, stifle it. It answers questions as opposed to raising them. Lowers entropy instead of increasing it.

My goal is to stimulate thinking. If people say they disagree with me -- excellent. Sometimes I disagree too. There are many sides to every question, and many of them are valid. To fix on one answer as being the only one would be to eliminate creativity, imagination. It's why stories told on radio can be so incredibly vivid compared to movies or TV. You get to supply the visuals. So if the meaning isn't obvious, you get to find your own meaning. That's better sometimes than filling in all the blanks. Create new blanks.

My pictures are supposed to raise questions. The first one might be "Why did he put that there?" You may find you have an answer, but know that that's your answer, not anyone else's. It says something about you. Or you might look at the picture and say "That's a weird picture" and not give it another thought. That's also a valid answer. Or you might be tired of the pictures and see one and choose not to read the article. More power to you!

Esther Dyson once sent an email asking why there was a big picture of herself next to an article that had nothing to do with her. "I thought it was an interesting picture" is what I said. I told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

I once got a call from a neighbor when I lived in the country, she said she was going to get some baby goats, and they might make a lot of noise as they were being weaned from their mother. I asked why she was getting the goats. She said she always wanted goats.

That's pretty much what the images mean.

What will Hillary do with her power?

Sat, 10 May 2008 19:52:00 GMT

Oh the political debate is getting interesting!

Assuming the Democratic nomination is actually decided, then what is Hillary Clinton's future role?

Last night on Larry King I heard Carole Simpson, a black woman, supporter of HRC, say that it's white men calling for her to withdraw. (Transcript.)

Stephanie Miller chimed in "I have ovaries."

Even so, it seems to me that people of all genders are conspicuously not asking Clinton to withdraw out of respect for her power, which she has a lot of. What she does with that power now will have a lot to do with what happens next. I know that's pretty waffly, but I don't know how else to say it. She could blow something up. She could ask women to get angry. If she does, it seems there will be some angry women. Maybe many very angry women. Scary thought. No sarcasm.

Perhaps her role will be analogous to Al Sharpton, sharp-tongued rallier of specialized anger.

HRC is potentially a political leader of women unlike any leader we've ever seen. There have been some powerful women politicians -- Bella Abzug, Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto, Nancy Pelosi.

But what will Hillary do with her power?

How tech wars end

Sat, 10 May 2008 14:38:17 GMT

The tech industry is organized around the concept of wars. In recent memory, the browser wars, the Java wars, before that there were wars over email APIs, desktops, GUIs, networking standards, you name it, if there's money to be made in controlling users, there's been a war to lock those users in. It's been that way since the dawn of time, and it will always be that way. It's in human nature.

It's also in human nature for the users to realize they're being used, get fed up, and create or discover the technology for themselves thereby routing around all the warring parties. It's as if the citizens of France during WWII got fed up with the Germans and the Allies, and decided to create a new France on new land and all move there, leaving the armies to fight over nothing. You can't do it in the real world, but it's how it works in the virtual world.

Having seen a number of these wars, and seeing each of them end not in triumph, but irrelevance, I believe we're getting closer to the end in the warfare defined by social networks. That's the real lesson behind this article by Mike Arrington, about the three companies throwing vapor at each other, two publicly, MySpace and Facebook, and Google in the back channel. Somewhere lurking back there are Microsoft and Yahoo, each with also-rans no doubt coming soon. I wouldn't pay too much attention to what the big players do here, they will be too constrained by BigCo thought processes, and a desire to appear to be giving stuff away without actually giving anything away.

Open is a funny thing, you can't be partially open. You can't edge your way toward open. You can't be open and hold the valuable stuff in reserve for yourself. BigCo's can't afford to do what it takes to coalesce a popular maturing technology around their own platform. It won't happen in BigCoLand. Only a little dude with nothing to lose can choose to build around something truly open. (The big guys are always forced to, eventually.)

The most famous war-collapse was when the web took over from the warfare between Microsoft and the Taligent team (Apple, IBM, Borland, Novell, lots of others). They were all busy blowing smoke at each other over the users when out of nowhere a network that had been around longer than any of them, that had already solved every problem they were trying to solve that was worth solving, swooped in and doused all the warfare. How? The users fell in love, and as we know, love is a very powerful force.

My guess, if I had to make one, is that the social network that we will all be building on in the coming years is already out there. It could be Twitter, after it's federated, or it could be what FriendFeed is teasing about. Or it could be two kids in a garage that no one is paying attention to. Keep your eyes and ears open and trust your gut, you'll know it when you see it.

When Obama wins...

Sat, 10 May 2008 14:53:39 GMT

There's a game being played on Twitter that goes like this.

"When Obama wins..."

The game is to fill in the blank creatively. .

Here are some examples.

Here's my entry.

Coming soooooon

Fri, 09 May 2008 01:17:05 GMT

We're working to build a scalable, beautiful new TwitterGram, an application built on the super-powerful SwitchAbit platform.

Comments in Twitter?

Thu, 08 May 2008 15:25:05 GMT

I just posted a Tweet: "After seeing comments blossom in FriendFeed, it seems either Twitter should have comments, or extend the API so someone else can add them."

Why?

1. People still reply to tweets, expecting a response in a tweet. It's noise to most of my followers. They send responses (to me) asking what am I responding to. If I answer that, then other people ask what I'm responding to in explaining the other person's response. Twitter is not symmetric, that's a good feature, but it makes for a shitty conversation medium, imho.

2. Far more people use Twitter than use FriendFeed. Yes, I think it's great there are APIs and that makes it possible for FriendFeed to build on what Twitter does. But it is a competitive market and ideas should slosh around among all the products.

3. The length of this post should provide a clue why comments would be good in Twitter. I started writing #1 in Twitter itself, and went over 140 chars before I had expressed a single idea.

Testing Pownce public downloads

Thu, 08 May 2008 19:44:03 GMT

I just uploaded a song I recorded on Tuesday to Pownce. After two tries, it worked. You have to be logged in to download the song but anyone can play it. Hmmm. That removes one potential application I had in mind, Pownce as a podcast-serving platform.

Here's a screen shot of the post.

Anyone should be able to listen to the song even if they're not a member of Pownce.

Screen shot of the prefs page for public/not public.

Update: Sometime after it was uploaded it stopped working, people were unable to download the song. Obviously there are still some glitches to work out.

Pownce becomes more useful

Thu, 08 May 2008 14:19:59 GMT

Twitter is still my mainstay in microblogging, but I'm using FriendFeed more, and today Pownce removed an important limit that will make it useful in a way that neither Twitter or FriendFeed are. And because all three have APIs and excellent support for RSS, the chances to combine their strengths makes it possible for each to specialize.

Where Pownce is developing strength is in the area of payloads, but until today they were limited to members of Pownce and for non-pro users, to friends of the uploaders. Now it's possible to upload files that can be downloaded by anyone. The size limit for payloads used to be 10MB, now it's 100MB, and for pro users 250MB. Interesting new applications should be possible, making it competitive with services such as YouTube and blip.tv, and because it has an API it's possible to develop applications with Pownce that are not possible with other services.

Is MySpace opening?

Thu, 08 May 2008 21:40:18 GMT

This post on TechCrunch started a bit of discussion.

Ben Metcalfe posted an interesting video comment there, embedded below.

Obama, the Democratic nominee

Wed, 07 May 2008 20:47:04 GMT

1. There's no doubt now, Obama is going to be the Democratic nominee, and very likely the next President. I doubt if McCain has the sense of entitlement that HRC had but he's going to run on experience, and we don't want experience, we want intelligence, honesty and change.

2. Obama will show up once or twice in Kentucky and West Virginia, but it will be relaxed, he'll do big rallies, town halls, meetups, take a bowling lesson, shoot some hoops.

3. At the same time he'll tour the following states: Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Minnesota, Iowa, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin, Missouri, Illinois, Virginia. I must be leaving some out. The point -- illustrate for everyone who might have been listening to HRC that he gets that these are the important states for any Democrat, and it doesn't matter that HRC got more votes in some of these states, he plans to compete to win all of them. Campaigning in those states signals that he's on to the next phase of his candidacy.

4. Take a breather, prepare for HRC's concession, a big party somewhere, and then off to Europe in June to meet with the leaders of the western alliance. A motorcade down the Champs Elysees. The family visits with Gordon Brown's family. Pay respects to the Queen of England. Show the folks back home that in the Obama Administration the US will have many challenges, but we'll also have lots of friends to help.

What else? Not sure. What do you think??

Fred Wilson on Bootstrapping

Thu, 08 May 2008 00:53:28 GMT

Fred's heart is in the right place. He puts money behind technology he likes. This is bootstrapping. Then he bothers the developers with features he needs. He's a bootstrapper and a hacker. Then Fred reads articles written by other people and listens to a Tim O'Reilly keynote and tries to get everyone into agreement. Reminds me of The Negotiator, William Shatner.

Fred believes in triangulating, I do too. It's how you find the truth. Obviously I agree with Fred's conclusion -- just today I was working with Jay at Switchabit on a very small project. We spec'd it out, I went to work on it, and after I did it the way we discussed I realized there was a much more direct and simple way to do it, so I re-did it, and again I realized it was too complicated, and I re-did it, sent him a report, he integrated it into his project agreeing that it was much better than what we discussed.

People who believe in big-bangs miss that you learn stuff while you're implementing stuff and that learning should be recycled back into the project, again and again.

There was an excellent series on PBS a few years back called Connections; in each episode they take you through a series of developments how little pieces of one thing became something much bigger, you start with something small and every step of the way make small improvements and before you know it you're standing on the moon saying "One small step for man..."

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

I've heard bootstrapping described as "paving the cowpaths."

Twitter was a bootstrap too. There were a lot of small things that needed to get solved before Twitter could work. It may look like it popped up out of nowhere if you don't know how the pieces came together, but if you do...

One thing that's feeding epiphany for me is that I'm working with Scott Rosenberg on his history of blogging, which promises to be a great book, and reliving all the steps that got us to where we are.

Soup

Wed, 07 May 2008 23:57:52 GMT

Comcast's 250GB limit?

Wed, 07 May 2008 14:26:59 GMT

DSLreports piece says Comcast may impose a 250GB monthly limit for customers. If you go over, you pay $15 per 10GB.

Since I got shut down last month for being in the top 1/10th of 1 percent of their customers, without notice, I'm in a pretty good position to evaluate this plan from a customer's perspective.

Comments...

1. They're stating publicly that they have a limit and what the limit is. This is better than having an unstated limit that's a moving target over time and geography.

2. They will provide a site where they tell us how much we've used.

2. It gives other ISPs something to compete against. They can offer plans with a 350GB limit or a 1TB limit.

3. It's not fair to customers to change the terms after they sign up. People always argue it from Comcast's perspective, never from the customer's. They may have a right to do it, but it still isn't fair.

4. How much bandwidth does a product like Slingbox use? Probably not a product Comcast loves very much, btw.

5. There's a weird connection between this and DMCA notices. Makes me wonder what their real motivation is. Remember Comcast is in the TV business, and video on the Internet is a big bandwidth user.

6. Do you think Comcast should lease their cable to competitors if they're not going to provide plain vanilla internet access?

7. I want neutral Internet service, so I can build whatever I want to out of it. I don't mind if there's a meter, but I don't like the deal changing after I sign on, makes me wonder what's coming next.

Gary, Indiana

Wed, 07 May 2008 04:39:33 GMT

By popular request, my ode to Gary, Indiana -- the town that is turning the world upside down tonight.

Japanese Twitter has ads

Wed, 07 May 2008 00:20:48 GMT

Gotta admit Twitter has interesting bugs! A few minutes ago, while tracking election returns (Obama wins NC yesss!) all of a sudden the Twitter UI changed to Japanese.

Then we started getting ads.

Here's one with a Toyota ad.

So much for not having a business model!

IRC for Indiana/North Carolina

Tue, 06 May 2008 04:36:25 GMT

I started a chatroom for tomorrow's primaries.

irc://irc.freenode.net/#indianaNorthCarolinaPrimary

Please join if you want the firehose conversation!

Breaking news on Twitter

Tue, 06 May 2008 21:15:12 GMT

Read this post from John Borthwick, my partner in Switch-A-Bit.

http://www.borthwick.com/weblog/2008/05/06/future-of-news/

Breaking news covered by a loosely coupled ad hoc group of Twitterlings.

Update: Reuters was watching too.

Boostrapping a decentralized Twitter

Mon, 05 May 2008 15:45:15 GMT

Overnight Mike Arrington weighed in on the decentralized Twitter discussion. I'm glad he is getting involved, he's a smart guy and is now using Twitter as an integral part of his communication system. But I have to disagree with the way he characterized my thinking.

I always work in bootstrapping mode, addressing the first big issue, solving the problem, then advancing to the next one. It's why so many of the ideas I've worked on have become popular modes of communication. Big-bang approaches always fail. I've spent decades arguing with people who want to reinvent the world in one stroke. They always try anyway and always fail. Bootstrapping is the only way that works.

BTW, I'm not the only one who believes in bootstrapping. Doug Engelbart, who invented many of the things we take for granted today works that way as well.

So the first step in decentralizing Twitter is to get our data safe and stored off twitter.com. Then we need discovery, a way to find people through Twitter, and then without Twitter. There are many ways to do this that work and scale (DNS for one, Skype does it too, without a central server).

It's also important that we work with Twitter and that they be rewarded for being the primary bootstrapper of this network. I think it's important because it's right, and also because we need to incentivize others to do the same.

Also, while others believe the conversational aspects of Twitter are primary, I'm not one of them. I buy into the original vision -- "What are you doing?" -- and also see it as a link-blogging environment. I have of course used it conversationally, I've replied on Twitter to others, but I don't depend on it because I think this is going to "spam out" -- in fact it already is going that way. Just in the last few days I've gotten replies from users whose Twitter streams look totally like splogs, and at least a few of them are clearly automated. I block every one of them.

Steve O'Hear: Respect what already exists. Amen!

Is Obama black?

Mon, 05 May 2008 14:35:06 GMT

Yesteray at breakfast at the Sunnyside Cafe in Albany, we arrived late, all the indoor tables were taken so we sat outside. It was frigid cold, for California, in the low 50s. I wasn't really dressed for it.

We started talking with the man at the next table about how cold it is, and I said it's nothing, I grew up in NYC and went to school in Wisconsin. The man, who was black and wearing an Obama for President button, said he was from the Bronx, we started talking about the hometown and the good old days (we're about the same age) and after a while talk turned to politics and he volunteered something that I found jarring. You know Barack Obama isn't black like I am. Hmmm.

He said Obama was raised by his white mother in Indonesia and his white grandparents in Hawaii and his father who was from Kenya was not an American. I've been to Hawaii, it's not like the Bronx or Chicago, LA or the Deep South where most black Americans live. If you look at a map you'll see how far away Hawaii is from the US mainland.

So what's the point? I don't know, but if if the tables were turned and we were electing the first Jewish president, but his father was from Israel, and his mother was Christian, and he was raised far away from the cultural centers of Jewish life in the US, I'd wonder how much like me he was.

That's all. I'm still voting for him.